The gap between 6th and 7th is growing rapidly as the season's go on. Right now, there are 17 points between us and Man Utd in 6th. This is an enormous gap to attempt to narrow.
In 16/17 the 6th/7th gap was 8 points, in 17/18 it was 9 points. Over the last 5 seasons, the average number of points required for 7th is 60. I think this is our current standard, despite the fact that we'll fall some way short of this total.
There are two things we need next season in order to achieve at least 60 points, and narrow the gap to the top six.
Firstly, we need to be more competitive against the top six sides. This season, we've taken 7 points from our 9 matches against them. In each of the last two seasons, we've taken 8 points from our 12 matches against them. We need to be looking for around 15 points a season from these games .
Secondly, we need more goals in our side. This is necessary to achieve the above point but also to put away the lesser teams more effectively.
It would be an absurd gamble to rely upon the likes of Gray, Ghezzal and Barnes next season. Barnes is a talent and may become a goal scoring player as he showed at WBA. But we cannot rely on this happening. The other two have never shown any kind of figures to justify persisting with them.
Gray will be 23 in a few weeks. He's scored 18 career goals in over 200 appearances. There is less than a 10% chance of him scoring in any given appearance. He simply isn't good enough for a team aspiring to a minimum of 7th place.
Ghezzal is 27 in a couple of weeks. He's scored 19 career goals in 166 appearances. So we get a goal from him one in every nine games. He has five goals in his last two seasons, so he's becoming less threatening with age. He isn't good enough for us.
We have to get serious this summer with this group of players. I've picked on Gray and Ghezzal but there are multiple others that need to go if we're genuinely ambitious. Gray and Ghezzal are Brighton quality wingers, not Leicester quality ones.
